Jason and Medeia

Home > Literature > Jason and Medeia > Page 17
Jason and Medeia Page 17

by John Gardner


  stood a hundred-year-old vine with a massive, shaggy

  trunk,

  withered to the roots. We chopped it down; then crafty

  Argus

  hacked out a sacred image of the queen of gods, long

  gray hair

  flying as he wheeled his axe. He skilfully shaped it,

  gray ears

  cocked to the whisper of Athena. When he finished, we

  set it up

  on a rocky eminence sheltered by dark, tall oaks, and

  made

  an altar of stones nearby. Then, crowned with oakleaves

  (night

  had fallen now, the dark storm howling around us), we began the sacrificial rites. I poured libations out, shouting to the goddess to send those flogging winds

  away.

  Mopsos and Orpheus whispered. Then, at Orpheus’

  command,

  the Argonauts, in all their armor, circled the fire in a high-stepping dance, beating their shields with their

  swordhilts, drowning

  the noise of the Doliones, far below us, still mourning their king. More wildly than the storm mute Phlias

  danced, their leader.

  Louder and louder their armor rang in the night, and

  the flam

  of drums. I could hardly hear myself, yelling to Hera—

  much less

  hear the howling of the winds, the howl of the

  mourners. Then—

  strange business!—the trees began shedding their fruit,

  and the earth at our feet

  magically put on a cloak of grass. Beasts left their lairs, their burrows and thickets, and came to us wagging

  their tails. Nor was

  that all. There had never been water—there was neither

  spring nor pool—

  before that time on Bear Mountain. Now, though no one

  touched

  a spade, a stream came gushing from the earth, a stream

  that flows

  even now, called Jason’s Well. And so, it seems, the

  goddess

  heard us. We finished our rites with a feast—all this

  according

  to ritual. By dawn, the wind had dropped. We could sail.

  “Old Mopsos said—we were standing in the woods

  alone, when the rest

  had walked back down to the harbor—: ‘My son, you did

  that well!

  Never have I witnessed a more auspicious flush of signs! Such miracles! Surely the goddess Hera loves you, boy! Surely the crew of the Argo is in divinely favored hands!’ I bowed. He studied me, picking at his lip. He

  said,

  eyes wicked, grinning in spite of himself: ‘You’re

  unimpressed.

  Some trick, you imagine? You think the goddess of

  will (all praise

  to her name) may not have been here with us?’ Then

  I too smiled.

  “We made a good deal of noise,” I said, and avoided his

  eyes.

  ‘ If I were a mountain, a stormy sky, and were shaken

  to the heart

  by noise like that, I might do almost anything—goddess or no goddess.’ The old seer chuckled, crazy-eyed. ‘Shrewd observation,’ he whispered, bending close.

  ‘Bravo!

  All very well for a big ignoramus like Herakles to shudder and shake at magic tricks. We know better,

  you and I!

  Mopsos, king of all augurers, marching to his death—

  and for what?

  And Jason, robbed of his Lemnian beauty, forced on a

  senseless,

  pointless mission—abandoning his mother to

  ignominious

  death, wasting his wonderful oratory (“Jason of the

  Golden

  Tongue,” as they say) outshouttng cacophonous winds

  and drums:

  pawn of the fates, murderer of friends that he meant

  no harm to,

  weary wanderer in a faithless world (alas!

  lack-a-day!)—

  no wonder if the racket that shakes Bear Mountain to

  her deepest stones,

  the clatter that whisks away winds—has no faintest

  effect on him!

  What has the son of Aison to do with the goddess of will? —Jason, who’s gazed into the Pit!’ He cackled,

  delighted with himself.

  ‘Are we brutes? Are we Balls on Inclined Planes? Are

  we mindless?—noseless

  to the stink, everywhere, of Death? Let Philosophy set

  it down

  that love is illusion, from which it follows, the gods are

  illusion,

  which proves in turn that Mother Nature, who gives

  such joy,

  is an old whore earning her keep!’ Then suddenly:

  ‘How do you feel?’

  He stared, intense, his eyes so bright you’d have thought

  some demon

  had entered him. ‘How do you feel?’ I thought about it. I felt like a man renewed. It was completely senseless. How can the mind know all its mechanics and scoff

  at aid,

  cold-blooded, and yet be aided? Nevertheless, I was a man reborn. It was stupid. ‘Me too!’ old Mopsos said, cackling, doing a dancestep, lunatic joy. ‘We’ve had us some times!’ he said. We’ve done us some deeds!! Old

  Hera’s in us!!!’

  He paused. ‘Whatever that may mean.’ He winked,

  then aimed

  his staff at a tree. It was filled, suddenly, with fire.

  He aimed

  at a rock: it burst into feathers, screeched, flapped off.

  ‘So much

  for the quacks on the isle of Elektra!’ he said. Then,

  sobering,

  adjusting his robe and beads—the robe was none too

  clean—

  he bowed, taking my arm. And so we returned to the

  ship,

  all dignity, solemnly walking in step. And so sailed on. Idmon, younger of the seers, came over to my rowing

  bench.

  ‘Pick a halcyon, any halcyon,’ he said. He winked.

  “Faith wasn’t our business. Herakles’ business, maybe. Sailing the cool treacherous seas of the barbarians …”

  9

  The wind dropped down to nothing. We rowed— ‘in

  a spirit of friendly

  rivalry,’ mad Idas said, rolling his eyes, making fun of

  God knew

  what. Still, that’s what we did, each trying to shame

  all others.

  The windless air had smoothed out the waves on every

  side;

  the sea was asleep. We rowed, driving the singing ship, swift as a skate, by our own power. It seemed to us— skimming the sea like a gull, a wingèd shark—not even Poseidon’s team, the horses with the whirlwind feet,

  could have overtaken us.

  But later, when the sea was roughened by the winds that blow down rivers in the afternoon, we wearied and

  relaxed,

  and we left it to Herakles alone to haul us in, our

  muscles

  shaky with exhaustion, throats burned raw by panting.

  Each stroke

  he pulled sent a shudder through the ship. His sweat

  ran rivers down

  his face and dripped from his nose and chin to his

  wide chest

  and belly, tightened like a fist. Young Hylas beamed at

  him, watching,

  and old Polyphemon, son of Eilatos, grinned, shaking his hoary head, and swore that not even in his prime,

  when he fought

  with the Lapithai, striking centaurs down with his bare

  fists,

  had he or any other man pulled oars with the power of Herakles. ‘It looks as if by himself hell bring us to the Mysian coast! the old man said. Herakles

  grinned,
<
br />   or tried to, his face contorted with the effort of his

  rowing. But then,

  as we passed within sight of the Rhydakos and the great

  barrow

  of Aigaion, not far from Phrygia, Herakles—ploughing enormous furrows in the choppy sea—snapped his long

  oar

  and tumbled sideways, clear off the bench. He looked

  up, outraged,

  the handle of the oar in his two hands, the paddle end

  sweeping

  sternward, away out of sight. We laughed. He was

  angrier yet,

  sitting up, speechless and glaring. We took up the

  rowing as best

  we could, weary as we were. Even now he could hardly

  speak,

  a man not used to idleness.

  “We made our landfall.

  It was dusk; the time of day when the ploughman,

  thinking of his supper,

  reaches his home at last and, pausing at the door, looks

  down

  at his hands, begrimed and barked, and curses the tyrant

  belly

  that drives men to such work. We’d struck the

  Kianian coast,

  close to Mount Arganthon and the famous estuary of Kios. Luckily, tired as we were, the people greeted us kindly, supplying our needs with sheep and wine. I sent a few of the Argonauts to fetch dry wood, others to

  gather up

  leaves from the fields and bring them to the camp for

  bedding; still others

  I set to twirling firesticks; the rest of us filled the winebowls, getting them ready for the usual sacrifice to Apollo, god of landings.

  “But Herakles, son of Zeus,

  left us to work on the feast by ourselves and set out,

  alone—

  attended by unseen ravens, the night’s historians— for the woods, anxious before all else to make himself

  an oar

  to replace the one he’d broken. He wandered around till

  at last

  he discovered a pine not burdened much with branches,

  and not

  full grown—a pine like a slender young poplar in height

  and girth.

  When he saw it would do, he laid his bow and quiver

  down,

  took off his loinskin, and began by loosening the pine’s

  hold

  with blows of his bronze-studded club. Then he trusted

  to his own power.

  Legs wide apart, one mighty shoulder pressed against

  the tree,

  he seized the trunk low down with his hands and,

  pulling so hard

  his temples bulged, face dark with blood, he tore up

  the pine

  by the roots. It came up clods and all, like a ship’s mast

  torn

  from its stays, the wedges and pins coming with it,

  when sudden fashes

  break without warning as Orion sets in anger. When

  he’d rested,

  he picked it up, along with his bow and arrows,

  loinskin

  and club, and started back, balancing the tree on his

  shoulder.

  “Meanwhile Hylas had gone off by himself with a

  bronze ewer,

  looking for a hallowed spring where he might get

  drinking water

  for the evening meal. Herakles himself had trained

  the boy

  in the business of a squire. He’d had the boy since the

  day he struck down

  Hylas’ father, Theiodamas, king of the Dryopians. Not one of Herakles’ nobler moments. They were a

  lawless tribe,

  the Dryopians, fornicating with one another’s wives, maddening themselves by the use of strange distillations

  and roots,

  scornful of the gods. Unable to find any honest quarrel, Herakles went to the king one day when he was

  ploughing, and began

  an argument concerning an ox. One moment the king

  was laughing,

  scornful and clever, enjoying the contest; the next he

  lay dead

  in the fallow, his skull caved in. He felt no guilt

  about it,

  Herakles. He took the child from the basket beside the field and brought it up, made the boy his servant—

  trained him

  as a shepherd trains up a loyal, unquestioning dog.

  “Soon Hylas

  discovered a spring, tracing the swift stream upward in

  the dark

  past moonlit waterfalls, majestic trees—it was not the

  nearest

  of the springs he might take water from; but he was

  young, after all.

  and the night was beautiful, filled with the sound of

  cascades; immense

  ramose old trees, motionless, brooding on themselves.

  He could stand

  on the shelf or rock overlooking the dark, still pool and

  feel

  he was the only boy on earth. To his left the torrent fell

  away,

  swifter than you’d guess, swirling and rippling,

  murmuring something

  that was almost words, and he must have felt that

  if he made his mind

  quite still—more still than the dark—he might, any

  moment, know

  what it said. In the forest beside him, bats were

  a-flutter; owls

  swept silently down the wide avenues of trees; a stately hart stood quiet as a sapling, watching. A fox crept,

  sniffing,

  in the brush.

  “There was in that spring a naiad. As Hylas drew near she was just emerging from the water to sing her

  nightly praise

  to Artemis. And there, with the full moon shining on

  him

  from a cloudless sky, she saw him in all his radiant

  beauty

  and gentleness. Her heart was flooded with desire; she

  had to

  struggle to gather up her shattered wits. Now the

  moonling leaned

  to the water to dip his ewer in, and as soon as the

  current

  was rattling loudly in the ringing bronze, she threw

  her left arm

  firmly around his neck and eagerly kissed his lips; her right hand snatched his elbow, and down the poor

  boy plunged,

  sinking with a cry into the current.

  “Old Polyphemon, son

  of Eilatos, was not far off. He’d left our feast to search

  out

  Herakles and help him home with his burden. When

  he heard

  the cry he rushed in the direction of the spring like a

  hungry wolf

  who hears the bleating of the distant flock and, in his

  suffering, races

  down to them only to find that the shepherds have

  beaten him again,

  the sheep are safe, enfolded. He stood on the bank

  and roared—

  the reboation rang down the gorge from cliff to cliff to the broadening holm below, where the river was

  wide and deep—

  and he searched the night with his dim eyes; he

  prowled the dark woods,

  groaning in distress, roaring again from time to time; but there came no answer from the boy. He drew his

  heavy sword

  and began to search through the place more widely,

  on the chance that Hylas

  had fallen to some wild beast or been ambushed by

  savages.

  If any were there, they’d have found that innocent easy

  prey.

  Then, as he ran along the path brandishing his naked

  sword,

  he came upon Herakles himself, hurrying homeward


  to the ship

  through the darkness, the tree on his shoulder.

  Polyphemon knew him at once,

  and he blurted out, gasping: ‘My lord, I must bring you

  terrible news!

  Hylas went out after water. He hasn’t come back.

  I fear

  cruel savages caught him, or beasts are tearing him

  apart. I heard him

  cry.’

  “When Herakles heard those words the sweat

  poured down

  his forehead and his dark blood boiled. In his fury, he

  threw down

  the pine and rushed off, hardly aware where his feet were taking

  him.

  As a bull, maddened by a gadfly’s sting, comes up

  stampeding

  from the water-meadows, hurls himself crazily, crashing

  into trees,

  sometimes rushing on, stopped by nothing—the herd

  and herdsmen

  forgotten now—and sometimes pausing to lift up his

  powerful

  neck and bellow his pain, so Herakles ran, that night, sometimes pausing to fill the distance with his ringing

  cry.

  “But now the morning star rose over the topmost

  peaks,

  and with it there came a sailing breeze. Tiphys

  awakened us

  and urged us to embark at once, take advantage of the

  wind. We scrambled

  to the Argo in haste, pulled up the anchoring stones

  and hauled

  the ropes astern, all swiftly in the shadowy dark. The

  wind

  struck full; the sail bellied out; and soon we were far

  at sea,

  beyond Poseidon’s Cape.

  “But then, at the hour when clear-eyed

  dawn peers out of the east, and the paths stand plain,

  we saw

  we’d left those three behind. No wonder if tempers

  flashed!

  We’d abandoned the mightiest and bravest Argonaut of

  all! What could

  I say? It was my mistake. I’d make plenty more, no

  doubt,

  before this maniac mission had reached its end.

  —All this

  for a shag of wool, the right to make dropsical

  courtiers bow,

  smile with their age-old hypocrisy—or dark-lumped

  urchins

  stretch for a cure of the king’s evil. I tried to speak but couldn’t. I covered my face with my hands and

  wept. Mad Idas

  chuckled. Catastrophe suited him, confirmed his ghastly metaphysics.

  “But huge Telamon was rabid, uncle

  of Akhilles—a man with a temper like that of the boy

  who sits

  this moment, if what we hear is true, chewing his

  knuckles,

  stubborn in his tent on the blood-slick plain of Troy.

  He said:

 

‹ Prev